tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post5705448680264893740..comments2024-03-28T18:32:05.933-04:00Comments on bensozia: Work Makes Us Crazy, Including the Essay WritersJohnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-59560486584067786402021-10-20T17:33:30.160-04:002021-10-20T17:33:30.160-04:00@John
Measured by what metric? As I've pointe...@John<br /><br />Measured by what metric? As I've pointed out in other posts, raw dollar numbers are meaningless - pay has to be considered in terms of inflation, cost of living, buying power, etc.<br /><br />Also, presumably the raw dollar numbers are intrinsically higher because nurses here work more hours? If the average US nurse works 50% more hours than the average European nurse, then <i>obviously</i> they will be earning <i>at least</i> 50% more raw dollars (and <i>should</i> actually be earning far more than via overtime hours).<br /><br />Also, how much more miserable are the working conditions? If American nurses are being made to put up with more bullshit than their foreign counterparts, they deserve commensurately higher wages as "hazard pay".<br /><br />Also, how much more expensive is it to obtain training and a license? How much harder is it to find open positions in the places people would prefer to live and work? How much harder is it to find affordable housing within reasonable commuting distance? How much more reliant are US nurses on private transportation? How much more do US nurses have to pay for malpractice insurance?<br /><br />US nurses might make high raw numbers, but you need to then adjust those for all the additional costs external to their wages. If you earn twice as much in raw dollars, but your basic expenses are three times as much, you aren't richer than your counterpart, you are substantially poorer!G. Verlorennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-218659524614140572021-10-20T12:56:02.574-04:002021-10-20T12:56:02.574-04:00@G-American nurses are the highest paid in the wor...@G-American nurses are the highest paid in the world, significantly higher than in most of Europe.Johnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-43454522531985634582021-10-19T12:31:20.431-04:002021-10-19T12:31:20.431-04:00Adding to my own post:
One of my favorite evil Sc...Adding to my own post:<br /><br />One of my favorite evil Scrooge moments of the past few years came when the Texas lieutenant governor declared in March 2020 that we didn't need social distancing or business closures to combat Covid because plenty of over-age-70 folks were happy to face death if it meant business could still boom. I'm content to see any amount of we-can-all-slow-down-and-still-get-stuff utopianism as a counterbalance to that particular POS.Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14456987412710878404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-19988177032017212352021-10-19T11:25:48.008-04:002021-10-19T11:25:48.008-04:00But if an eight-hour shift as a hospital nurse is ...<i>But if an eight-hour shift as a hospital nurse is too much to bear (actually most hospital nurses work 12-hour shifts, but setting that aside) then who is going to take care of sick people? If we're going to cut the hours nurses work then we're either going to have to pay nurses less, or hire more of them and charge everybody more for health care. It's simple math. But simple math is, so far as I can tell, beyond the ken of Malesic and his ilk.</i><br /><br />Other modern affluent countries manage to have more nurses working fewer hours at higher wages, and their healthcare still costs far, far less than ours does.<br /><br />The problem isn't one of capability, but of will. There's nothing stopping us from making changes to bring ourselves in line with other comparable nations, except that we simply refuse to do it out of stubbornness.<br /><br />We don't <i>want</i> to spend money on having more nurses who work less and are better paid - we prefer to waste that same money (and a lot more on top) lining the pockets of shareholders in a for-profit system.<br /><br />We prefer to allow pharmaceutical companies to do insane things like sell life savings drugs at 10,000% of their manufacturing cost, advertise prescription drugs on television, and operate a system of kickbacks where they pay doctors to aggressively push their products instead of prescribing people what is actually most medically appropriate for their health needs.<br /><br />We prefer to have a system where a huge bulk of our costs are derived from a needlessly bloated and byzantine insurance bureaucracy that is designed not to protect people or reduce medical costs, but simply to profit investors as much as possible by extracting medical 'rent' from the populace.<br /><br />We prefer to have a system where instead of the norm being spending a small amount on mere ounces of prevention, we spend absurd amounts on countless pounds of cure.<br /><br />We prefer to have a system where instead of keeping our nurses healthy and effective at their jobs, we overwork and underpay them to produce high rates of turnover, poor quality of care, and the needless human suffering (and added financial costs) of both physically and mentally sickening employees (who then need their own medical care) by working them into the ground.<br /><br />We simply <i>prefer</i> to have the most expensive, least effective healthcare system out of modern affluent countries. We could do far better by making common sense changes and emulating the best practice of our international peers - but that would mean taking much of the money out of medicine, and we just can't tolerate that notion - we don't want a system that produces less human misery if it also produces less profits for shareholders.<br /><br />~~~~~<br /><br /><i>A hatch opened up and the aliens said,<br />"We're sorry to learn that you soon will be dead,<br />But though you may find this slightly macabre,<br />We prefer your extinction to the loss of our job."</i><br /><br />- Bill Watterson, <i>Calvin and Hobbes</i>, August 9, 1992G. Verlorennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-70754612923329793832021-10-19T09:57:47.115-04:002021-10-19T09:57:47.115-04:00I see the sort of complaining you're, well, co...I see the sort of complaining you're, well, complaining about, as part of a necessary balancing. After all, on the other side there's Objectivism, work-hustle culture, lean in, life-as-a-moral-drama tough guys, Sinema and Manchin, etc., etc., etc. I suspect anti-work screeds are simply part of the mix that is necessary to get the top income tax rate increased by, say, 2%, to get even a nastily means- and virtue-tested child tax credit passed, and in general to move the needle even a tad. Plus, of course, I don't mind hearing it and rather identify with it, even as I recognize the practical problems. So I can look upon anti-workism and benignly mouth wisdom about balance, tolerating diverse opinions, so on and so forth. Whereas I wouldn't be troubled if I never heard from an Objectivist again. Fortunately our society is so structured that I can enjoy begrudging Objectivists, Q-Anon, and whatnot their right to be part of the balance, while I have no actual power to determine who gets to be part of the balance and who doesn't.Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14456987412710878404noreply@blogger.com